


Apocalyptic Diversion

by Ezlebe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Board Games, First Kiss, M/M, Multiple Universes Colliding, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 15:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18317891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: Hux takes an unsteady breath, unsure what his brain is onto with this dream, then notices a familiar hand just beside his on the table. He stares at it, then follows up an arm to find Ren sitting there staring back. He’s even wearing the same clothes as he had been when he left, a tan jacket over a burgundy university shirt.“Ren?” Hux says, hearing his voice emerge tight.Ren doesn’t answer except to look away, a tight look pinching across his face. He seems… embarrassed?“Mr Organa chose a four-player game,” the other Hux announces, his voice stern and no-nonsense.Hux glances to Ren again, then theotherRen, who just blinks back, and slowly opens his mouth. “Excuse me?”





	Apocalyptic Diversion

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is a twitter-fic from months ago from r/writingprompts that I edited/rewrote into something more put-together, and if you've already seen that, thank you for coming back! ([Original version](https://twitter.com/ezlebe/status/1083474849471684608?s=20))
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> [also: Inchells Awesome Art of Death and Ren! ](https://twitter.com/wonchells/status/1083881407598911488?s=20)

Hux stares at himself in the dark, steaming surface, his reflection sunken and bruised, and wonders how much whiskey before the toddy turns into a cocktail. He holds the bottle tilted a moment over the edge, then pours the rest in, watching his image rise a centimeter more. He doesn’t think the campus police would even blame him, should he somehow be discovered drinking ‘underage’. He might wander out to see, once he can bring himself to leave their rooms.

His rooms. He won’t even be able to get more whiskey after this bit – Ren has… _had_ the fake ID.

He looks up with a start when he hears a scuffle at the door, heart leaping to his throat and momentarily thrilled, but then Phasma stumbles through shaking her head free of snow. He feels his heart sink, looking back to the tea and slowly, unsteadily lifts it up.

“You left the door open,” Phasma says, her voice ever flat, but something behind it scolding.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Hux mutters, staring downward and feeling oddly like if he looked her in the face he’d say something foolish.

“Hell, it’s cold in here,” Phasma says, her booted feet stomping in the known direction of the thermostat behind Hux. She offers an exaggerated, chilled shudder. “I’m surprised Ren let you put it down this – 57? Good _Lord_ , Armitage.”

Hux takes a short sip: bitter, slightly burning unrelated to the temperature. He’d turned the heat down this morning, as a joke; now, it’s simply fitting.

He listens to Phasma walk behind him from the kitchenette to the beds, confused going by the way she shuffles back and forth. He is tempted to just shout at her to get out, but she won’t react to that well, and it’s better he say something now, before the entire campus finds out. Ren hadn’t been particularly popular, but… his mother was, who will inevitably be making some sort of visit.

“Where is he, anyway?” Phasma asks, rounding back and standing behind him while tapping at his shoulder with an evident notebook. “I printed him my notes from stats.”

“Gone,” Hux says, rather proud of himself for managing to say the word without his voice cracking.

Phasma sighs heavily, plainly misunderstanding. “Long? I don’t have time to wait because the bastard _felt_ like skipping.”

“No, he – ” Hux closes his mouth with a snap, biting into his lip.

It shouldn’t even feel this bad – he’s only known Ren for a year and a half and they hadn’t exactly chosen to know each other. He might even… He could get a bet- _another_ roommate, one who doesn’t leave his things out or tear something up and then freak out about it ten minutes later, half-begging for help put it back together. Hux glances sideways at the remains of a rather expensive portable speaker, thrown against a wall for the crime of being near Ren after he got a bad mark. He had been going to repair it on the weekend, but there’s little point now.

“Hux?”

“There was an accident,” Hux forces out, now unhappily recalling the bland tone from the medical examiner; the stony expression of apathy. They hadn’t cared a bit about the man on their slab or Hux about to come apart in front of them. “Or so said.”

“An accident,” Phasma repeats, sounding blindsided, the previously offered papers audibly hitting her leg. “What sort of –?”

“They had me confirm,” Hux interrupts, taking another sip from the mug, letting it settle uncomfortably in his mouth. “About… an hour or so ago.”

Phasma goes relatively quiet, until her harsh breathing culminates in a rigid tone. “What about his family?”

“I don’t know,” Hux snaps, finally looking backward and finding Phasma pale, her mouth pinched with emotion that Hux has been trying to ignore in himself. His shoulders drop, and he turns around fully to lean against the counter. “I don’t _know_. They just made me look at him – insisted on it.”

The silence sinks heavy, and Hux keeps his hands folded around the mug, looking down at it and trying to seep warmth. He knows Phasma turned up the heat already, can hear the ticking in the pipes, and part of him is getting angry about that, as little sense as it makes – sitting in the cold won’t change a thing.

“Are you okay?” Phasma asks, hushed and almost cautious, certainly some amount patronizing.

“Nothing happened to me,” Hux says, doing his best to keep his voice flat, not to acknowledge the choke at the base of his throat. “I wasn’t – I wasn’t with him.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Phasma says, frustration in her expression for an instant, straightening to her full height. “ _Hux_.“

“Phasma,” Hux counters, refusing to hear more – he doesn’t need to listen to platitudes on his own cowardice; not now, not when it has only been _hours_.

Phasma takes a loud breath, then there’s a faint pressure of her hand over Hux’s arm, appearing then disappearing, “Do you want me to go or stay?”

“Go,” Hux mutters, glancing up and past her to the sofa.

Phasma mutters something derisive under her breath, which is predictable enough, and then lingers for long enough that it seems like she might more forcibly disagree. “I’m checking up later,” she says, her voice firm, and her boots step out of Hux’s line of sight. “Might stay the night.”

Hux shrugs, taking another sip, then a larger gulp. He hopes he’s already passed out when she comes, unaware of what little he might wake to.

* * *

 

Hux wakes with a jarring chill down his back, jerking upward to find a table solid beneath his hands, unfamiliar wood and steel slatted together. He blinks at it, not quite understanding, and looks up slow to find the room – the _environment_? – to be little more than an endless black shadow. His vague uncertainty dives to anxiety at the sight of his own face less than a meter away across the table, clearly older, though somehow not quite aged any further; his hair brighter, skin clearer and paler, almost as if in… Hux shies away from the thought, instead glancing to his jacket – form fitting, yet made of black leather like a posh biker. He looks to the doppelgänger’s side to find Ren, only again, not… _Ren_. His hair and eyes are a void-like black, clothing similarly dark, but woven and loose, wrapped about him in an unadorned style.

Hux takes an unsteady breath, unsure what his brain is onto with this dream, then notices a familiar hand just beside his on the table. He stares at it, then follows up an arm to find the real Ren sitting there staring back. He’s even wearing the same clothes as he had been when he left, a tan jacket over a burgundy university shirt.

“Ren?” Hux says, hearing his voice emerge tight.

Ren doesn’t answer except to look away, a tight look pinching across his face. He seems… embarrassed?

“Mr Organa chose a four-player game,” the other Hux announces, his voice stern and no-nonsense, as if Hux is going to argue with himself in this uncertain dream.

And he might any other time, but he doesn’t know how to argue with a statement he absolutely does not understand. He glances to Ren again, then the _other_ Ren, who just blinks back, and slowly opens his mouth. “Excuse me?”

“We offered him choice of game,” other Hux says, lifting and folding his hands together on the table. He tips his head, a twist at the corner of his mouth that Hux can practically feel himself. “He chose a four player, so we brought you in.”

"Ren," Hux sighs, trying not to feel like he’s playing a part in his own loss of faculty; his subconscious shoving him into a dream about an _absurd scheme_ , rather than anything more enjoyable, but… It’s well good enough, with Ren looking just as he had yesterday. Not like today. Not cold and too still. He wants to reach out to touch, but... But then he might wake up, so better to play along. “Can you do anything yourself?”

“I didn't know what I was picking," Ren snarls, overreacting some while still hunched over and boring holes into the table.

Hux looks to the figures at the other side again, grimacing when the other Ren raises his brows in evident amusement. He lowers his voice, knowing it’s probably futile. “Do you know why they look like us?"

“No,” Ren says, shoulders dropping even further, then exhaling a sigh that seems to deflate him. “I don’t know shit.”

The other Ren coughs shortly, eyes evasive and flat-mouthed when Hux looks at him. "...We don't. Look like you. Or are you.”

"We are War and Death," the other Hux adds, sending a look sideways that’s tinged heavy with an eerie frustration. “I am War."

Hux narrows his own eyes, glancing to his own Ren, who has finally looked up, and manages to share incredulous eye-contact with him before focusing back on the doppelgängers. He has no idea how his mind has come up with this, can only blame the stress and whiskey – Ren and Death, somewhat tragically associated, but not himself and _War_. "The Horsemen?"

"Yes," War says, giving a dismissive gesture with a single hand, then curling it just slightly into himself. "So how we look is inconsequential."

"Could you... change it?" Hux asks, finding himself peeking up and down, a crawly, awful sensation at the back of his mind. He’s never felt quite this degree of uncanny valley – even in other out-of-body dreams, the observed was still undeniably part of _him,_ not himself claiming to be a… a demon? “Is it part of the game?"

Death shrugs slightly, turning his dark eyes on Hux and familiarly apathetic. "Sorry."

"I'm sure," Hux mutters, sarcastic by rote. He then feels his brain catch up with a jerk, looking to sideways with a grimace, he shouldn't be mouthing off to Death, no matter how much he (They? _It_?) looks like Ren.

Wait. No, he shouldn’t care – it’s a damned _dream_.  

"Can we just start?" Ren says, interrupting thoughts with a sulking sigh.

"No," Death says, head tilting and brow raising, familiarly and unfamiliarly self-superior. "You need to move."

“Move?” Hux repeats, wondering if the situation is about to take a decidedly Carrollian turn, but the surroundings stay shifting shadow and their simple table. He flinches slightly when War stands, and realizes it was meant in a literal sense rather than anyone being upended into a life size card game, though he still feels himself tense when War pauses to stand beside Ren, standing on nothing and towering tall over the table.

"Move," War says flatly, gesturing for Ren to take his vacated seat. “You’re not permitted to be on the same team.”

"Wait," Ren protests, somehow starting to move while gripping tighter on the table, resulting in a bit of a ludicrous-looking stretch while his mind visibly disagrees with his body. "You said I picked - "

"Yes, you picked the _game_ ," War interrupts, bending over slightly and eyes appearing to flash a startling orange-red bright enough to match his hair. "But we hardly want collusion, do we? So get to your side, you awful child."

"Asshole," Ren snaps, finally shoving up from his seat and practically stomping to the other side.

Hux grimaces at the sight of Ren slumping next to Death, making unwanted mental jumps to the obvious meaning of this vision without having even finished it. He hasn’t before analyzed himself amidst the dream, but he’s been under a lot of stress – perhaps he’s not even truly asleep, but muttering to himself in mournful hallucination.

"The deal is..." Death trails off, gesturing oddly over the surface of the table while his hand opens and closes. “We always play us against him," he clears his throat, dropping the hand with a quiet thunk. "Or them.”

"What game _is_ it?" Hux asks, looking to Ren, only to find him shrugging with an uneasy twist at his mouth. Does he not know?

 "We're fighting a… war,” Death says, trailing off slightly and then narrowing his eyes, head tilting toward War with a frown. “I think."

"Wait, is this like Enders Game?" Ren asks, frustrating Hux slightly for _stealing_ his question. “Did you _trick_ me?”

"No," War says flatly, sighing and visibly irritated at the suspicion. He turns his hand, prompting a box to appear in his open palm, tan and bearing an American Revolutionary War illustration. "It's quite literally just a board game where one wages war.”

Hux stares at the box, then glances to Ren still pouting across the table, and feels a tightness at the base of his throat. “Why?”

War looks over narrowly, “Excuse me?”

"Why?" Hux repeats, raising his voice, though he knows for certain that he’d been heard. He lifts his chin, looking now to Death. "Why are you playing child’s games with.... with lost souls? Just let him move on."

“It’s not a child’s game,” War mutters, allowing Hux the unwelcome privilege of seeing himself sulk – the folding of his face is not particularly appealing.

"Do you _want_ him to move on?" Death asks, regarding Hux with an awful, familiar gaze, dour but no less piercing. "Right now?"

Hux feels himself wilt slightly, peeking to Ren, then dropping his eyes. He assumes if Ren goes, he simply wakes, back to sitting on the stiff dorm sofa. Alone. But he refuses to admit that he dreads this dream ending aloud, or that he worries this is some attempt of his subconscious to make Hux let Ren go, his rational mind attacking the emotional. It’s only been hours… Is even his own mind refusing to allow a day?

"Wait, I’m dead?" Ren interjects, looking to his double, oddly panicked and mouth dropping open. "When did I – is Hux dead now too? Did I kill _Hux_?!"

"No.” Death says flatly, then leaning over slightly to loom over Ren. “Lower your voice.”

"Don't overthink Death's usual cheating," War says, straightening the game in front of him and pulling off the lid to the box with a clatter of disturbed pieces. "Let us just get to the game."

Hux watches War pull out a folded paper instruction, revealing a mix of organized colored squares underneath, as if he’s simply about set it up. He takes a harsh breath, realizing he can’t just put up with this – can’t just play a game. His… his _best friend_ just died, even if technically he’s sat in front of him. "I’m not going to."

"Trust me, you will," War says, his tone indifferent while he now lifts out a board that unfolds into an oddly stretched map of America.  

“What is it?” Ren asks lowly, shoving up on his hands and leaning over to peer at the box. "1775: Rebellion?"

Hux blinks rapidly, leaning forward toward Ren, angling his head at the same angle, and catches the same scratchy, faux vintage font. "Excuse me – did you not _pick_ it?"

“Just the picture,” Ren mutters, falling back to his seat with a heaving sigh. “It was like a… bunch of them on some weird hologram.”

War pulls out a group of tokens with British flags, giving one pattern to Hux. "We're playing as the British."

Hux frowns in realization, watching Ren and Death get doled out the American tokens. He’s tempted to repeat that he’s _not_ playing, but also, "I don't want to lose."

"We won't," War snaps, oddly vehement, a particularly determined set to his mouth and shoulders squaring while he lays out the other pieces on the map. "Death is terrible at strategy."

Death hums low, undeniably mocking and irritatingly particular about it. "America and death always prevail."

"You won once," War says, tetchily straightening out the squares in perfect order, barely looking up to acknowledge Death’s claim. " _Once_. And it was a stupid bet."

“That wasn’t the only time,” Death says, folding his hands together on the table with an odd, triumphant glance to Hux.

“That hardly makes any sense,” War says quietly, then scoffs slightly, sitting up slightly and raising his arm at the elbow with a pointed finger. “Do you mean the real war? You’re not actually American, you _berk_.”

Hux glances slowly to Ren, unsurprised to find him looking back with a raised eyebrow. He rolls his eyes slightly, because he can’t quite say what he’d like, and feels a reluctant smirk on his lips when Ren gestures with a tilting hand in return.

"They lied about not being us," Ren says aloud, his voice brasher than need-be and effectively breaking the argument.

Death is quiet for a beat. "Did not."

Hux feels his own comments die at the tip of his tongue; he knows Ren’s voice when he’s feeling caught out, and that was it. He glances desperately to his side, at _War_ far too interested in doling out cards, then back over to Death being surly at the table in a familiar face. "...How would that work?"

"I don't know," Ren says, grabbing at the edge of his hoodie strings in an absent pull, scrunching the hood up around his neck. He looks down when cards are thrown at him, voice fading into a sullen mutter. "But it explains everything."

"It does not," Hux says, feeling a crack at the middle of his chest.

Ren raises an eyebrow, a certain petulant turn to his mouth. "It does so."

"You're dead!" Hux snaps, even still feeling some part of his mind trying to convince himself that this is a dream, but it’s too real; the solidness under his hands, the games he’s never heard of, the inability to make War and Death just disappear so he can enjoy his memory of Ren in peace. "If they were us, you'd - you wouldn't be. We'd - be here - _There_. At the dorm."

"I don't even remember it, though," Ren says, his tone thoughtful, as if this his being gone from the _world_ is more of an idea than a truth. "Dying. I was just... I was at class and then here."

“They said..." Hux swallows, feeling his shoulders drop and suffering a ghastly image flickering across his mind’s-eye. "Accident. I saw you, you were... I don't know why they didn't call your mother."

"As I said," War interrupts sharply, with little care for sorrowful mood at his side. "Pay no mind to the cheating."

Death scoffs loudly, rearranging his cards with an odd twitch of his hand that slips them in and out of his palm. "You're cheating by telling them!"

"I said nothing incriminating," War says, sitting back in his seat and straightening his hand into a perfect fan between his fingers. He glances to Hux, next words clearly pointed to confirm the absurd suggestion from Ren, though there’s a distinct impression it’s only to annoy Death. "Only that _you_ were _cheating_."

"I don't understand how - " Hux tightens his hands into fists, grudgingly thankful to be distracted from thinking further about harsh lighting and steel slatted walls of refrigerators. "You can't age into bloody Biblical characters!"

"Not _Biblical_ ," Death says, an affronted frown crossing his expression; he glances to War, as if for support, then down to his cards when he finds none. "I'd say we're... gods of no particular religion."

"Gods?" Ren repeats, appropriately disbelieving, though now it’s just a little hypocritical of him. “What?”

Death looks up to glare just at Ren, which is more amusing than it should be, then exhales a heavy sigh and his shoulders curl in with visible defeat. “Just tell them.”

“There are infinite universes," War says, a little too steadily not to be annoyed, and dropping his pieces with a dissatisfied frown. He gestures with that hand, the other now pressing a pair of fingers to his temple while he glares upward at the boundless void above them. "Thousands of us – War and Death, Ben and Armitage, Kylo and Hux, et cetera. Sometimes we borrow pairs of you, sometimes just one. Sometimes Death will kill one or the other, because it'll put them on an uneven keel depending on the game. But we’ll put you _back_. So just play the bloody game and stop asking questions.”

Hux feels his breath catch, “Both of us?”

“Obviously,” War says, dropping his hand and returning to his cards. He shoos Death from a pair of green tokens, sliding them back in their place. “We can’t directly effect another dimension. Now, who would like to hear the rules?”

“ _War,_ ” Death groans, slumping down into his seat with a painful looking eyeroll.

The game itself proves easy enough, if the company unshakably awkward, worsened considerably by little quips between War and Death that slowly grow more and more intimate. Hux just wants to win, to go home, not listen to proof that some version of him isn’t quite so gutless as him. He’s lived with Ren for a year and a half, but the only step he’s made towards what he wants was small and taken months ago, when he suggested they request each other as roommates again as sophomores. He thought he’d be able to speak up with more time, but clearly that hasn’t happened, and… And still might never.

“That can’t be fucking legal,” Death snarls, startling Hux from his thoughts, proceeding to reach out and grab War’s wrist to keep him from pulling any pieces off of… Nova Scotia. Apparently.

War pulls his arm free in an easy movement, then brandishes his invasion card, which details his privilege to capture an entire territory and kill all the enemy armies within. “Darling, you can’t tell me it’s illegal – it’s written plainly on the card.”

Death scoffs and shifts backward, stopping his attempts at grabbing the card to presumably throw it. “Fine, it’s not fair, then.”

“Don’t get stroppy,” War says, a duplicitous frown across his mouth, quickly twitching into a smirk. “It’s unbecoming.”

“So?” Death counters, his sullenness abruptly disappearing while he offers an appalling smirk, focusing it steadily, as he has most of his expressions, on War. “You’ll still _be_ - _coming_ in me, later.”

Hux closes his eyes for a beat, trying to ignore the heat at the back of his neck; his subconscious can’t quite decide if it’s from embarrassment or... something else. It helps some that the horsemens’ voices aren’t quite the same, containing a reverb that is certainly inhuman.

“That was awful,” War says, far less affected and absently flipping one of the little British tokens. “But I expect nothing less.”

Hux peeks across the table, suffering a swoop low in his gut at seeing Ren grimacing at the comments, and bites his cheek while straightening a yellow cube on the flee space. The only comfort he has is that the British are, in fact, taking over the board.

“Still need a truce,” Ren mutters, gesturing at the little sections of the board reserved for the cards. “To win. Two of them, right?”

War tips his head, then shakes it, rearranging his cards before fanning them out again. “I don’t do truces.”

Hux peeks down at his hand, the card staring up, then looks over to Ren again only to find him this time looking back. He twitches his thumb slightly, moving the card, then watches Ren lift his chin.

“What are you two doing?” War says sharply, his thin hand reaching out and gesturing between them with a snap that is far too loud to have come from a pair of fingers. “There is to be _no_ collusion.”

Hux rolls his eyes and looks over, glaring, “Why have _Ren_ pick this game, anyway? You two seem wildly eager to play it.”

Death hums low, reaching for the order draw cubes and retrieving them from their bag. He sighs when War’s is pulled first, then Hux’s, his mouth slanting, “We have too many games to agree on one.”

“How many games have you played?”

“85248,” War says, pausing a moment, then humming shortly, “Not counting thousands of repeats.”

Hux turns his head slowly, staring at War – he’s shocked that many board games can exist, even accounting for multiple dimensions, let alone that anyone would bother to play them. He doesn’t even like board games himself, finds them generally slow, though this one might be enjoyable, if he didn’t constantly feel two seconds from saying the wrong thing and waking up.

“Sometimes it gets boring playing with just two,” Death adds, his tone dropping low and turning undeniably suggestive. He focuses dark eyes on Hux and offers the sort of half-smile that draws attention right to his full mouth. “So we started recruiting close enough to ourselves to _play_ with.”

Hux swallows shallow, feeling prickles of heat crawling up his ears. He wants to offer his own smirk back… but it’s not even Ren, it’s bloody _Death_. He glances to War slightly, finding him looking back and entirely unoffended, and feels the heat creep further across his cheeks – good lord, what is this?

“We’re not,” Ren interjects sharply, shoulders dropping some when attention is turned toward him. He tugs on his hood, looking down, and his voice fades almost to a mutter. “Close enough. The flirting is – is awkward. Could you like, stop?”

Hux drops one of his hands to slip under the table, tightening it into a fist and digging his nails sharp into his palm. He wonders if these almost-gods will erase his memory, or if the dream will be forgotten, because he could’ve done without hearing Ren he so spiteful at the mere idea of… of _them_.

War is quiet for a few seconds, then looks narrowly to Death. “I thought you looked into these two.”

“I did,” Death says, snapping back and defensive right away, slumping slightly and noticeably avoiding War’s judgement. “They live together.”

War scoffs at his next breath, and the judgmental look he sends Hux is entirely uncalled for, “That hardly means anything.”

“It’s an assigned dorm,” Ren says, driving the screw a little deeper.

“Assigned?” War repeats, his voice dropping low and noticeably clipped. “ _Death._ ”

“How was I supposed to know!?” Death snaps, shoulders curling inward and both hands flattening over the table.

“Bother to observe them, as you’re _meant_ to,” War snaps, his expression now entirely made up of a frown that quickly turns his lips to a pale, thin line. “Rather than just going and killing one.”

Death huffs in offense, mouth twisting in shapes while he lifts his chin in a definite gesture, only then suddenly his black eyes go a glowing white and he is completely still; not even his chest expanding with breath. He starts back to life a pair of seconds later, as if nothing had happened, and retakes his cards. “They just haven’t gotten to it yet.”

Hux stares blankly, mind refusing to catch a few seconds, then feels his eyes go wide, glancing to Ren and looking away again when he finds him visibly stunned. He doesn’t _seem_ disgusted, at least, which is forgiving, though it’s entirely a mystery what could happen to make him go from being borderline offended now to later being interested in the idea.

“Then why not take them older?”

Death scowls hard, leaning forward over the table. “Do you want to restart the entire fucking game, War?”

War remains reticent for few tense seconds, then sighs and gestures with a turn of his hand. “Proceed.”

Hux narrowly glances between War and Death, finding disappointment and frustration obvious in both of them. It’s now very evident that the _boardgame_ is hardly the only thing that was meant to happen here, which is…  Not something he is going to think about. He can’t think about any of this; he’s already having trouble getting past the echoing declaration of ‘ _yet’_.

“Aren’t you going to say how?” Ren asks in a rush, tone laughably high, though Hux isn’t in a particular mood to laugh.

“You won’t remember any of this,” War says, dismissing the suggestion with an even voice and a frustrating indifference. “There’d be little point.”

“Even more reason to,” Ren says, suddenly glancing to Hux, then just as quickly looking away with a visible swallow and a hunching in of his shoulders. “Isn’t it? We won’t remember.”

“We’re in the middle of a game,” Death says, in such an irritating low whine that Hux nearly tells him off out of reflex.

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, almost as if he might accept it, then pointedly folds and draws his hands back from the board and its cube armies. “It’s my turn and I’m not moving.”

Hux peeks down sideways, watching War roll the pair of choice dice between his fingers; the movement goes on for seconds, then stop for just as long, until it starts up again. He looks away after a few seconds, back to pretending not to watch Ren, startled by how something so small could be so menacing.

“ _Fine_ ,” Death says, rolling his eyes and going still again for a pair of moments, then grunting shortly. “You’re asleep.”

“Asleep,” Ren murmurs, brow furrowing while he looks down to the table.

“We’re _asleep_?” Hux repeats louder, finding muttered disbelief not quite impactful as it should be; he deserves – _they_ deserve an actual explanation, not a vague placation. “That is not an answer.”

“Is so,” Death says, reaching out and moving Ren’s army for him with that jarring telepathy.

Hux takes a deep breath through his nose, tightening his jaw. “How can you be a god and so incompetent?”

“I said technically,” Death counters flatly, a flicker of a pout across his expression, “ _Technically_ a god.”

“We are embodiments of civilizations’ end,” War says, voice interjecting sharp as if offended on Death’s behalf. “We are nothing comprehensible by a tiny human mind; god is simply as close a word as available in your language.”

“Tiny?” Hux scoffs, just managing to stop himself from standing to look down on War, knowing that would hardly give him an advantage; he doesn’t exactly have somewhere to storm off to after that isn’t the dark. “Clearly, you’re no better than us, or you wouldn’t be wasting such vast minds on _games_.”

“Really?” War says, leaning into Hux’s side with a bony shoulder and a sneer, gesturing in a vague sense at Hux’s front with a curl of fingers. “Shall we drop a hint with the keepers of your dimension? Perhaps you’d like _them_ more active.”

“You should, it would – ”

“Could you _not_ ,” Ren interrupts, his demand soon followed by a heaving sigh; it’s a turn from his urgency only minutes ago, as if either accepting or resigned to the Death’s explanation. “ _Fuck_. I just want to go home.”

Hux bites his lip, then reaches out to snatch for the bag of turn cubes with a roll in his stomach. He still can’t seem to shake, for all the claims, this worry he’ll wake up alone with his mind turned in on itself in melancholy. This place is simply so impossible, more so now with claims of futures to come.

The game manages to be somehow less and more awkward than before, though that could be blamed on Hux’s inability to concentrate. He wants to ask more – when, where are they, are they any closer It seems so unlikely, yet Death had – He could have said that only to get his way. He _is_ a version of Ren.

Hux jerks slightly when he feels a tap at his toe, looking up to find Ren narrowing his eyes and nudging a card. It must be the truce, and since order is going to go him, War, then Hux… Perfect.

“You traitor!” Death snarls the moment the card flips, his voice momentarily dipping to something too low to really _hear_ , yet still reverbing against Hux’s skin. “You can’t truce!”

“I just did,” Ren snaps back, smacking again the recently lain card with a flat palm. “Fucking stop me.”

“Terrible at strategy,” War says primly, hand flicking and pressing a truce card of his own to the board.

Hux glances over to him, then draws his own truce after watching War add green to his red. “End.”

“Damn it,” Death groans, covering his face and leaning into the board, eyes scanning across it in a drop of lashes. “We don’t have enough territories.”

Ren reaches out and points with a thunking finger across multiple areas of the board. “You didn’t make any treaties.”

Death offers an offended grunt. “I don’t make _deals_.”

“It’s a game, my dear,” War says, smirk advertising his smugness.

“I was out of cards,” Ren says, gesturing at his hands, though the nature of the game makes that somewhat a lie. “Plus, it’s been like two hours.”

Death is quiet for a beat, then frowns, looking off into the void like it might hold an answer. “Has it?”

“We do have very little concept of time,” War muses, proceeding to start gathering up all the little pieces.

Hux watches War with trepidation settling low and heavy in his stomach. “Are you going to make us play more?”

“No.” Death says, drawing the word out just slightly before coming to a full stop, soon followed by a short clear of his throat. “You were better partners than the last – What where they? The writers?”

“No, the homicidal warlock and the general,” War says, voice fading oddly, his appearance suddenly warping at the edges and going opaque, “Fitting roles, but the warlock wouldn’t shut up about his magic.”

Death offers a low hum of agreement, though it sounds almost as if through cotton. “Right. That general who kept trying to cheat. But he – ”

~

_Hux turns into his pillow,_ too hard under his head. He shifts into his shoulder and tries to knead it back into place, but…

“Fuck,” a voice mutters just near his ear, affronted and slightly rasping, “Stop it.”

Hux jerks away, heart stuttering when he realizes he’s been digging his fingers into a _chest_. He swallows, blinking against the sight of disheveled black hair spilling from a maroon hood, nose and lips peeking from beneath a shadow. “Ren?”

“What?” Ren mutters, waking slow and reaching out to pull Hux back, “Come on… I’m cold.”

Hux isn’t sure why, but suddenly he feels like he’s panicking, heart beating in his throat.

Ren groans slightly, peering up from under his hood, then eyes going noticeably wide. “Shit,” he says, shoving back on the couch with a visible glance downward, hands curling up at his front. “Sorry, that was – weird.”

Hux stares for a few seconds, then looks away, too; his heart is still pounding, something more than the usual infatuation telling him to move back to Ren. “That’s alright.”

“What was on?” Ren asks, pulling at his hood and rubbing at one eye while gesturing with his chin at the television. “It must’ve been really boring.”

“I don’t know,” Hux says, then drops his hand. He turns it, slow and just slightly, into Ren’s thigh; he’s warm – he’s so _warm_.

“What are you doing?”

Hux chokes on something like a laugh, already feeling a fool even before he speaks. “Only making sure you’re still alive.”

“Hey,” Ren says urgently, and suddenly he’s dragging Hux’s hand up to his chest, where it had been when they woke. “See. Still beating.”

Hux stares at his hand on Ren’s chest, slowly drawing his teeth hard across his lower lip. He glances up and catches Ren’s expression, plainly intense, and feels something swell and flutter beneath his sternum.

Ren drops his eyes in the next instant, visibly swallowing, “Can I – ”

“Yes,” Hux says, hoping he’s not giving pass to the wrong question. He shifts forward, only just, and is relieved and anxious in equal measures when Ren moves to meet him.

It’s less elegant than Hux imagined, flinching as a nose jabs awkward into his cheek, but he quickly finds what he’s wanted for months in Ren’s full mouth. He pivots on his knee trying to get closer and feels a big hand palm down along his spine, and lifts his own hand to bury in glossy hair, taking opportunity to confirm that too is just as lovely as imagined.

The kiss quickly becomes messy, soon little more than biting at each other’s mouths and pressing hard into each other. He starts to hope that Ren might like to take off a few layers, and drops his other hand from clutching near Ren’s heart to tease at a hem. He jerks back when there’s an especially sharp nip into his lower lip, reflexively tugging hard at Ren’s hair to pull him into the sofa. He narrows his eyes, though it’s difficult to put any real irritation into the glare.

“Sorry,” Ren rasps, with a smirking expression that assures he’s did it completely on purpose.

Hux huffs weakly, easing up his grip and still peering down at Ren’s face, suddenly realizing that he’s… He’s _relieved_ to see it. He doesn’t even think it’s because of the kiss, only that he’s just stupidly glad that Ren is here.

Good lord, how disgustingly sentimental.

**Author's Note:**

> I can also be found on the [twitters](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en) at Ezlebe


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